Home for the Holidays
by tinx-r
Summary: Immediately post-Vietnam. There are some things that can be faced alone. Christmas isn't one of them.


I walked down the busy street, eyes on the pavement, arms tight against my sides as I tried to avoid the jostling civilians. I hated coming into the city, but I couldn't go to Connecticut for Christmas without presents for mom and my sister, Vanessa. And buying for them meant a trip to High Street, no two ways about it.

It was hard to focus amongst the crowd and the traffic clamor. I was tense as I always was these days when I didn't have a planned line of retreat, and I made myself walk slow and measured, counting my steps. My white leather city shoes whispered on the asphalt, as far from combat boots and the sucking, stinking swamp as they could get.

All around me I saw the familiar shapes of the country I'd grown up in. The country I'd fought for. But I couldn't look at it too hard, too long, or it rearranged itself before my eyes into fetid jungle, green and lush and bloody.

I stopped still, rested a hand on a lamp-post and turned my head away from the street-corner palm tree that had taken me back there. It took an instant for the whump of the Huey in my ears to resolve itself into an idling taxi. The shouting I could hear was the newsvendor on the corner, not a sentry giving an alarm. I knew it, but it didn't stop the clutch of fear in my gut every time he sang out his headline.

_'Home,'_ I told myself firmly. _'All that's over now.' _I took three deep breaths and pushed away from the lamp-post, starting down the sidewalk again. I wasn't far from an exclusive boutique Vanessa and Mom favored. All I had to do was get to the place.

Redfern's was cool and white inside. The racks of clothing were sparse and apologetic against the stark walls and the two assistants were leggy and stylish in short skirts and high heels.

I walked straight to the far corner of the shop and pretended to look at a rack of some sort of dresses. I'd spotted the other exit as I came in and now I surreptitiously checked the windows. My breathing steadied as I noted the three lines of retreat from the store, plus the cover offered by the counter and the fitting rooms.

I spun around at a touch on my elbow, my brain already conjuring up the face of my partner. It wasn't Nick of course, I knew that, but the disappointment when I saw the sharp-featured assistant still cut like a knife.

Somewhere in my brain I found words I remembered from before, casual chatty words about the weather and the holiday, and the sharp features arranged themselves into a painted smile. I heard my voice asking about pretty scarves and bracelets and next thing I was looking at the girl's retreating back.

I turned back to the rack of garments. The assistant was gone in search of the things I'd asked for but I imagined I could still feel a touch on my elbow. _Nick. _My partner, the guy I'd been to hell and back with. Over there, he was fucking everything to me.

Over here he was nothing to me, and that was for the best because I knew I was nothing to him. Not anymore. War's a fucked up beast.

The girl came back and laid some things out on the counter for me. I took the first two scarves she showed me for mom and stopped her when she started on the merits of the bracelets. "That one," I said, pointing at the first one on the tray.

She wrapped the things for me and somehow I kept on smiling and nodding at her questions about paper and ribbons. I felt the tension in my shoulder blades ratcheting up and by the time I paid her my hands were shaking so bad it was hard to get my wallet out of my pants.

* * *

From the moment I got off the plane Mom dogged my heels, bringing me food and drink, touching me and talking. I sort of understood - it was only the second time I'd seen her since I'd got back, and the first time I'd been to visit her - but I couldn't stand it for long, certainly not the week I was supposed to stay.

I tried to tell her before dinner, but she cut me off and hugged me. "We love you," she said, patting my arm, shaking her head at me when I opened my mouth. "Cody, you're back from that awful place and that's all that matters."

"Mom - " I tried to pull away from her.

"Cody," she said sternly, and I dropped my head, looking away, a scolded schoolboy. "Cody, you're not in the army anymore. And we love you enough to make sure you remember that."

It wasn't something I had much chance of forgetting. Army life had become second nature by the time me and Nick were shipped home; we'd been at war two long, hard years and the camps and the jungle felt sometimes like the only life we'd ever known.

Waking up behind solid walls still scared me some. Waking up without Nick beside me scared me more.

And being marched in to Christmas dinner on my mother's arm scared me worst of all.

Somehow I made it through the meal. My face ached from smiling, my gut churned in protest at the scraps of turkey I'd managed to swallow, but I was fine until Mom turned on the Christmas carols. Their familiar strains took me straight back a year to a tent in-country, their words overlaid in my head with the raucous voices of soldiers. The voices of my friends, most of them now dead.

I didn't excuse myself, just ran for the one room in the house no-one would look for me. The one place I knew I'd find quiet, if not peace. In my dead father's study, his portrait still hung above his desk, glaring down at me like a disapproving ghost. I turned a petulant shoulder, not brave enough to turn my back, and stared out the ground-floor window at the manicured lawn, the bare winter garden.

This wasn't home, had never been home. The home I dreamed of over there was gone. When Grandad died, my father sold the beautiful old boat and I knew better than to argue. _"You need a college education more than you need this boat, Cody." _

Maybe I did, but the way it turned out, I'd ended up with neither. In the year since he died, I'd forgiven my dad a lot, but that was one thing I couldn't let go.

Nick and I had talked a lot of nonsense while we were away. I'd spun a dream of coming home to a boat just like Grandad's, a dream that got me through the war. A dream that dissolved like sunlight on the water in the face of my post-war reality: no job, no cash, nowhere to go. And no-one beside me.

I'd thought of war as hell on earth, but peace without Nick was a thousand times worse.

I didn't wait to see if they liked their gifts. Changing my flight emptied my bank account, but right then, all I cared about was getting back to California. The sooner the better. Mom didn't understand, and I didn't try to make her, just told her I couldn't bear the cold.

There was nothing for me in L.A., she was right. Nothing but memories and my grandfather's ghost, but that was more than I'd found in Connecticut. The only thing Connecticut had shown me was that if I had a home, that wasn't it, and I got off the plane and headed straight for the Veteran's Association.

I was done pretending. Nick Ryder was my partner, and without him, there was no way home. I just had to find him.

* * *

My mother never got done scolding me. Maybe that's why I was a good kid, the only one in my class to graduate without summer school. Maybe that's why I learned to fly a chopper when no-one believed I could. I don't know. All I know is, the one thing I always tried to do was make her happy.

She told me not to go to war, I promised I'd come home, and I did. But what I wasn't doing so hot at was being the kid she'd sent away, no matter how hard I tried.

I loved her, I never stopped loving her, but I'd seen things... I wasn't ready to be a nice Italian husband, a nice Italian father. Hell, I could hardly hold a job. So she had plenty to scold about, especially the days when standing alone snapped something inside of me an' I just crawled on back to bed.

There's a lot of words they use for vets, some of 'em politer than others, an' I knew my mother was reading up on 'em. She kept askin' me if I was having nightmares, talkin' about stress and coping strategies. I just smiled and shrugged and told her I was fine.

Thing is, you got to sleep to dream, an' without him beside me, I could barely shut my eyes. Not for more than a minute before I heard the mortars, heard the screaming, and when I reached out to empty air - man, it ripped me open, every time. It wasn't a coping strategy I needed, it was Cody, an' I wasn't suffering PTSD. Thing is, you live with a guy, breathe him, haul his ass through hell and trust him more than you trust yourself, it's fucking hard to figure out a world without him in it.

I coulda climbed inside a bottle, left the demons there to drown along with my soul, but the look in my mama's eyes broke my heart. It was broke enough already.

The mechanic down the block gave me some hours, simple stuff, the kinda things he used to have me do back when I was still in school, but I didn't complain. I'd spent the last few years working on engines more complex than anything he'd ever seen, but fillin' the oil and water kept my hands busy, at least. And I was grateful to the guy. He didn't ask me questions I couldn't answer, and never complained on the days I didn't make it out of bed.

Those days got more frequent as Christmas came closer, canned music, screaming kids and angry shoppers everywhere. Hard enough to take before I went away; impossible now, carrying the weight of war.

Everyone said it took time, an' I'd been waiting, waiting for the day I'd wake up feeling different. Feeling normal. But every long, haunted night seemed harder than the last, every morning looked blacker, until I wondered why the hell I'd made it home.

It was hard to get up and face an empty day. Easier to stay in the silent room and listen to my memories. Picture his face, pretend he was still beside me. Pretend I'd never come home at all.

I was lyin' in my bed, cold as hell despite my blankets and the afternoon sun pooling on my feet, when my mama banged on the door. "Phone call, Nicky!"

"I'm sleepin', Ma." It was a lie, but I didn't want to get up and listen to my boss or maybe some nice girl from the neighborhood my mama wanted me to date. There was no-one else who'd be calling me.

"Then you better wake up." There was no messing with my mother when she meant business, and I crawled out of bed. All the way down the hall she scolded me - "You haven't shaved! You haven't been up all day!" - and she pointed at the phone like a colonel havin' an off day.

"Yeah?" I turned my back on her and leaned on the wall, and it was just as well I did.

"Nick?" The voice I'd never forget, the voice I'd been listening for since I stepped off that godforsaken transport. He sounded near as broke up as I felt.

"Cody?" My legs wouldn't hold me, my voice didn't sound like my own. I couldn't see for tears. "C-Cody, are you okay?"

"I dunno, buddy." His voice sounded small, scared. "It's harder than I thought it was gonna be. I - I dunno if I can do it. Nick, I - I'm not sure what to do next."

I slid down the wall, kneeling on the floor, clutching that damned phone so hard I heard my knuckles crack. "You listen to me, man. You can do it, you hear me? You can do anything, long as you hang on, you know?"

"I know." His voice evened out some and I choked back a sob. Whatever happened, I couldn't lose him now. Not again. "Nick... do you think... do you feel like a beer?"

"Cody..." I couldn't speak for tears. "Listen, big guy, you got no idea how bad I need a beer, you know? Just tell me where. An' don't you worry, baby, we're gonna figure out what to do next. We're gonna figure everything out."

I still didn't know what to do next, or how we were gonna get through. But the afternoon had turned warm in an instant, and I knew, for sure, that we were gonna make it home. Together, the way we always had.


End file.
